Prison Overcrowding Essay

This paper discusses three critical issues in the criminal justice system. It touches on the general issues of punishment philosophies, sentence decision making, and prison overcrowding and focused more specifically on the negative effects of each. Highlighted in this informational paper is the interrelated nature of the issues; each issue affects and is affected by the others. Data and information has been gathered from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Amnesty International, the NAACP Legal Defense

Since the tough-on-crime era began in the 1980s, the California prison system and parolee population have grown tenfold. This is in great part due to the three strikes law that passed in 1994. This law made it a requirement for any offender convicted of a felony with two previous felonies to go to prison for a minimum of twenty five years. This law sent many people to prison for longer sentences due to non-violent drug offenses, when in actuality they should have been sentenced to rehab. Prison overcrowding is an important topic that all Americans should care about, since according to The Bureau of Justice Statistics, over ninety-five percent of all prison inmates will be released at some point, with over eighty-five percent of them being placed under parolee supervision. Of this population, sixty-five percent suffer from substance abuse issues and meet the need for treatment for their addiction. Drug and alcohol abuse, specifically drug abuse, and crime are inextricably related. Unfortunately, the majority of those released from prison who suffer from addiction issues are not treated while incarcerated, and as a result end up back in prison.

The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops

Corrections are an important part of the criminal justice system and they work in concert with law enforcement and the courts. Citizens in the United States expect criminals to be monitored, with some in secured facilities, so they will not fear of becoming continual victim of crime. To illustrate this expectation further, there are 2.5 million individuals on probation or parole and 1 million individuals in jails or prisons (Morris & Tonry, 2013, p. 370). However, does every individual confined in jails and prisons still need to be there or is there a better way to deal with certain special prison populations? Due to the large number of prisoners within the correctional system, certain special populations of inmates do not receive the rehabilitation or care needed to successfully reintegrate back into society. Additionally, these special populations create an undue burden on the correctional system in terms of financial costs associated with their confinement. There are changes that can be made to the criminal justice system to accommodate special populations of inmates. This paper will explore the alternative

No one knows exactly when criminal law and corrections began in human society. However, it probably would have occurred at the point in social evolution when collective vengeance was first substituted for private vengeance. That is, people realized that feuding was costing the group too much in terms of injuries and lives, and some individual’s behavior was first imagined to be harmful to the group as a whole. The entire group, or the leader(s) acting for the group, took action against the offender. (Stanko 25)

In 1994, the state of California followed the lead of Washington and signed a law that Californians know of as the three strikes law. With all the campaigning and publicity surrounding the law it was overwhelmingly welcomed into the legal system. The purpose of the law was to elongate the sentence of time spent in prison for repeat offenders, mainly focusing in violent or major crimes. As a result, the correction’s system has felt the effects of the law literally on prisons. Overcrowding prisons is a major problem in California and the state has a limited amount of time to correct the population reach in the California prisons.

Today’s jails offer a variety of problems and issues from overcrowding, physical health, mental health, substance abuse, staff shortage, and job stress. According to Wallenstein (2013) “what is now a matter of essential understanding is that jail systems book and release some 15 times the number of individuals are admitted and then released from prisons throughout the United States after the completion of sentence served. There are more than 2.3 million individuals found in an incarceration setting in this country. More than 1.6 million can be found in state or federal prisons, whereas approximately 735,000 can be found in county jails or local municipal jail settings.”

The United States spends $80 billion on incarcerating inmates per year. The government is spending more money on keeping an inmate imprisoned in relation to educating elementary/secondary school students. The government continues to spend more money on imprisoning people and cutting funds from important societal needs, including education. When funds get taken away, the amount of opportunities for others become limited. The United States should decrease the amount of money spent on incarcerating inmates because there are more effective options to prevent the high population of people in jail.

According to Mark Early, president of the Prison Fellowship International, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows that there are 19 states that have prisons operating at 100 percent capacity and another 20 are falling right behind them. There is no wonder why the overcrowding of prisons is being discussed everywhere. Not to mention how serious this predicament is and how serious it can get. Many of the United States citizens don’t understand why this is such a serious matter due to the fact that some of them believe it’s not their problem. Therefore they just don’t care about it. Also, some Americans may say that they don’t care about what could happen to the inmates due to repercussions of overcrowding, because it’s their own

Over the past few years, jails and prisons have become dangerously overpopulated. It is a growing concern that law enforcement and experts are trying to find solutions for. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 83 percent of the prisons are occupied. This can be caused by many different things such as changes of laws, improvements in tactics, harsher sentencing, and higher recidivism rates. It is still unknown if overcrowding affects the inmates negatively even though it is a problem in a wide spread of facilities. However, many issues surface when this kind of problem occurs.

The American Criminal Justice System held 2.3 million people in 7,000 prisons during 2017. America also holds the world’s highest incarceration rate, even housing 22% of all prisoners (Rauby and Wagner). Due to this many persons being charged and incarcerated, prisons and jails in the United States are getting full and even spilling into overcrowded. Many federal housings have too many people to function correctly and safely. There are multiple approaches the American Criminal Justice System is capable of taking in order to alleviate the pressure on prisons and jails, making them safer and more efficient for both the prisoners and those who staff them.

Over the decades, we have managed to create a much more just and effective prison system than ever before. Despite this, there are still many problems that prisons must deal with that need to overcome in order to function more efficiently. One of the main problems faced by prisons today is the overpopulation of inmates. Ever since the 1980’s, the total number of inmates in the U.S. has skyrocketed, with a census done in 2012 determining that we have over 2,200,000 inmates currently incarcerated. Compared to the roughly 500,000 inmates in 1980, you would have to wonder how this population could have gone up by over 400%. Some recent events that have mostly likely contributed to this increase include the war on drugs greatly increasing the number of drug-related arrests, the increase on “tough on crime” approaches leading to much longer prison sentences than ever before, and the high recidivism rate. This has created many problems, such as overwhelming the court system, worsening conditions in many prisons for inmate necessities such as health care and housing space, an increase in the spread of infectious diseases, and the stress this puts on correction officers and inmates alike. One suggestion I have to decrease prison overpopulation is an increase in alternatives to incarceration, such as probation for low-risk inmates and rehabilitation for those arrested for drug-related crimes. Not only would this help clear out our prisons, but it would also decrease the likelihood of

As each decade passes the American prison system population ever increases. Prison overcrowding is a huge detriment to society as a whole, even to those who don’t know what is going on. Prison crowding as one might expect can lead to inhumane and even unconstitutional conditions for prisoners (Mayeux). This problem causes prisoners to come out of state prisons less educated than when they went in, and more likely to commit the same or similar crimes in which got them in prison in the first place. Illinois on a more local level has the most overpopulated state prison system in the entire U.S. Illinois’ overpopulation has gotten to over 150% capacity of state prisons, that being higher than any other state (Green). The state and the state’s

Overcrowded prisons and improper punishment systems are enormous social issues for our government. The United States has seen steady growth in its prisons. A projected increment in seen due to “get-tough” policies that locks up offenders for longer sentences (Ohlemacher, 2007, para. 1). The correction system had been through various phases of transformation, and the government had been tough on crime; this approach had resulted in rising prison populations. There are many factors that cause overcrowding prisons in the United States. As a result, prisoners, physically and mentally, suffer the negative effects of it, and growing prison punishments that led to congested prisons and jails have shown that tax payers, as well as the government,

It is a well know issue in America that our prisons are overcrowding. In 2010 it was estimated that our country 's prison facilities were 25% over capacity. This included 19 states with prisons that were found overpopulated. The dilemma has numerous negative impacts. Some results in overpopulating consists of unhealthy living situations that do not meet the basic living needs of inmates, an increase in recidivism rates and an increase in taxes. At Touro University, Michael Ruderman, a doctoral student in medicine and public health, conducted a study that proved overcrowding can expose prison inmates to additional "psychosocial stress" and poor addiction treatment. These can are some of the leading causes in making people more prone to impulsive behavior, aggression, and drug use. It can take months for an inmate to receive medical attention once imprisoned, which can cause lack of needs to medication. Michael Ruderman, the Touro University doctoral student in medicine and public health who conducted the study, explained the findings by saying that overcrowding might expose prison inmates to added “psychosocial stress” and poor addiction treatment, both of which are known to make people more prone to impulsive behavior, aggression, and drug use. His study proved that, statistically, inmates released from overcrowded prisons failed to follow the restrictions and demands of probation and parole. With more and more inmates imprisoned each year, American citizens have to put more